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The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close
The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close
The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close
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The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close

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Nichols and May. John Belushi. Bill Murray. Chris Farley. Tina Fey. Mike Myers. Stephen Colbert. For nearly a half century, Del Close—cocreator of the Harold, director for the Second City, San Francisco's the Committee, and the ImprovOlympic, and “house metaphysician” for Saturday Night Live—influenced improvisational theater's greatest comedic talents. His students went on to found the Groundlings in Los Angeles, the Upright Citizens Brigade in both New York and Los Angeles, and the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago. But this Pied Piper of improv has gone largely unrecognized outside the close-knit comedy community.

Del was never one to let the truth of his life stand in the way of a good story—and yet the truth is even more fascinating than the fiction. In his early years, he traveled the country with Dr. Dracula's Den of Living Nightmares, knew L. Ron Hubbard before Scientology, and appeared in The Blob. Del cavorted with the Merry Pranksters, used aversion therapy to recover from alcoholism, and kicked a cocaine habit with the help of a coven of witches. And when he was dying, Del bequeathed his postmortem skull to the Goodman Theatre for use in its productions of Hamlet—a final legend that lives on, long beyond the death of the father of long-form improvisation.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2008
ISBN9781569764367
The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close
Author

Kim "Howard" Johnson

Kim "Howard" Johnson is the author of several books on Monty Python, including The First 280 Years of Monty Python, coauthor of the improvisational classic Truth in Comedy, and author of The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close. A writer and comedy performer, he was also personal assistant to John Cleese. He lives in Illinois with his wife, Laurie Bradach, their son, Morgan, and their dogs, Comet and Astro.

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    The Funniest One in the Room - Kim "Howard" Johnson

    Introduction

    Hey, you know who’s coming to my party? Del Close!

    Every December, my friend Mike Gold hosted a Saturnalia party at his Evanston, Illinois, home, and always invited an eclectic mixture of friends to celebrate the holiday season.

    I had always been a comedy aficionado, and in 1983, I moved to Chicago to study improvisation at the Second City. After two levels of training with Don DePollo, I didn’t know where else to study. Del Close is the best, DePollo told me. If you ever have a chance to work with Del, take it.

    Del had achieved his greatest notoriety in recent years for directing the Second City, discovering many of the improvisers who had blazed into stardom on Saturday Night Live and SCTV. He sounded like the best person to teach post-Second City improvisation, and the party would be an opportunity to meet him informally.

    The night of the Saturnalia party was a typical mid-December night in Chicagoland—cold, but without the subzero brutality that usually arrives in January and February. Mike had recently founded an independent comics company, so I spent much of the night talking with several comic book writers and artists.

    Eventually, a tall, middle-aged man and a younger woman with long, dark hair made their entrance without making an entrance. By now, the guests were all visiting in smaller groups, but each one was aware that someone of importance had arrived.

    A consummate actor, he commanded attention from the other guests, if only for a few moments. His deep, commanding voice resonated, and he seemed to dominate the entire apartment just by entering. It was difficult not to be captivated, even transfixed, and I continued watching him from the corner of my eye as the individual conversations resumed. At first glance, he could almost have been mistaken for a homeless person. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and dark trousers, which apparently had not been laundered recently. His dark hair, with only a few hints of gray, was unkempt and stringy. His black horn-rimmed glasses were apparently held together with adhesive tape. But it only took one look into his eyes to see the intelligence, the charisma, the energy behind them. He had lived hard, faced his demons head-on, and was still standing. He had plenty to teach those who could gain his trust.

    Mike led him to a few groups of guests. He sounded warm, gregarious, pleased to meet everyone. Finally, Mike led him to me.

    Howard, this is Del Close, said Mike, and we shook hands. And this is his partner, Charna Halpern.

    Are you a comic book writer? asked Del.

    "Actually, I do most of my writing for Starlog magazine, I explained, and when he looked impressed, I added, I occasionally write a little for Fangoria as well."

    Starlog? Fangoria! said Del, seizing on what was a relatively small aspect of my freelancing career. Turning to Halpern, he exclaimed, "He writes for Fangoria magazine!"

    I’ve been taking classes at Second City, I offered, And Don DePollo says you’re the best improvisation teacher anywhere.

    Del beamed, obviously pleased. Don DePollo. I used to direct him at Second City with George Wendt and Tim Kazurinsky and Jim Belushi . . .

    Halpern stepped forward. You should come take classes with Del, she said. He works with me at the ImprovOlympic.

    I had expected a more rigorous audition process, but whether it was mentioning Don DePollo or Fangoria, I wasn’t complaining.

    We’re starting a new session the first Monday in January at Crosscurrents, she said eagerly.

    I’ll be there, I promised.

    Before my first class, I was determined to learn more about Del Close.

    It didn’t take long to start collecting Del stories. The picture that began to emerge was confusing and sometimes contradictory, occasionally unflattering yet larger than life in a way that transcended show business hyperbole. If he was not quite a cultural touchstone, he had a finger—or possibly a hand—in much of the great comedy of the latter half of the twentieth century.

    Many have called Del Close the most important comedy figure of the last fifty years whom you’ve never heard of. Just a partial roll call of the talent he either worked with or directed is like a who’s who of American comedy: Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Shelley Berman, Joan Rivers, Barbara Harris, Jack Burns, Avery Schreiber, Fred Willard, Peter Boyle, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis, John Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, Betty Thomas, Dan Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, George Wendt, Jim Belushi, Tim Kazurinsky, Mike Myers, Andy Dick, Bonnie Hunt, Chris Farley, Tim Meadows, Joel Murray, Bob Odenkirk, Dave Koechner, Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Stephen Colbert . . . and those are only a few of the ImprovOlympic and Second City-related names.

    That alone would be enough to ensure his inclusion in any comedy hall of fame worthy of the name. But his other accomplishments are equally amazing. He was a circus fire-eater billed as Azrad the Incombustible Persian, a confidant of maverick comic legend Lenny Bruce, a stand-up comic of some renown with hit comedy record albums, and a counterculture icon whose prodigious substance abuse was remarkable even among his like-minded peers.

    But his true legacy is not in the comedy performers he midwifed, nor in the whispered legends of excess. In fact, Del Close led the movement to revitalize and reinvent improvisation, making it more than a method for developing short sketches, and developing what he would eventually call the Theater of the Heart.

    And that is why so many friends and former students flew from across the country to attend his birthday party as he lay dying in a Chicago hospital; why the Goodman Theatre was happy to accept when he willed them his skull; and the reason that there is a Del Close Theater at the ImprovOlympic, where his ashes are perched high on a shelf where they can affect his life’s work.

    The loyalty and cultish devotion he inspires, years after his death, even from those who never knew or worked with the man, only continues to grow.

    Yet Del Close, who was so devoted to truth in comedy, was the first to promote legends in the story of his own life, even as the facts were uncovered. His own relationship with the truth was complicated, and he often felt that the only way to tell the truth was with a lie. And as John Ford taught us: when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. So with a view to painting the most complete portrait of the man, the pages ahead are filled with both legend and truth. I leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is stranger.

    1

    Manhattan, Kansas: Setting the Stage

    I knew there was a great darkness at the heart of America. My hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, was nine miles from the geographical center of the United States. The CENTER—the heart-was in Fort Riley, Kansas—a military base. I always found that ominous.¹

    Del Close arrived in this world six minutes past midnight on March 9, 1934. The night was cold, but it was warm inside Park View Hospital, which overlooked City Park in Manhattan, Kansas, population ten thousand.

    Manhattan had been founded seventy-nine years earlier, in the rich agricultural valley where the Blue River and the Kansas River meet and flow eastward into the Missouri River at Kansas City. Ringed by the rolling Flint Hills, the area was often referred to as the Kaw Valley, Kaw being a nickname for the Kansas River, named after the Kansas Indians. The residents soon helped to establish the college known in 1934 as Kansas State College of Agricultural and Applied Science (now Kansas State University). Several miles west of Manhattan was Fort Riley, established before Kansas became a territory to protect travelers and settlers from Indians.

    Del’s father, Del Close Sr., was born in Belleville, Kansas, on October 6, 1900, one of four children. After attending Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, Del Senior lived briefly in Abilene and Salina before moving to Manhattan in 1927, where he found work in a jewelry store. Two years later, he established Del Close Jewelers, located in the 100 block of South Fourth Street in Manhattan. Del Senior’s strong work ethic was fueled by the economic problems of the Great Depression. The pressure to remain competitive was continuous. He preferred to be his own boss, which drove him to spend the long hours at work that he believed were necessary to succeed.

    To help his business grow, Del Close Sr. became involved in community activities. He was a president of the local Kiwanis Club, a director of the Manhattan Country Club, and for a time served as chairman of the City Planning Commission. He and his family belonged to the First Presbyterian Church.

    Mildred Madeline Etheringten Close was born on December 24, 1898. Two years older than her husband, she stayed home, like so many wives at that time, and the family relied on her husband’s income. Unlike many, she seemed to hold performers in some regard long before her son joined their ranks.

    Many years later, Del Junior claimed that Mildred had been fond of reciting a carnival spiel promoting an acrobatic act that she had first heard at a fair in Abilene in 1914: Dainty, determined Demona, daily defying death as she takes her own life in her hands and loops the loop in a hollow ball. Her son would often recite this himself in his later years, and speculated that such imagery may have provided the impetus for his own career. She was the funny one of the family, he would proclaim.

    Manhattan was located 125 miles west of Kansas City, but residents knew what was going on in the world. Manhattan had its own daily newspapers, the Mercury and the Nationalist, where residents got their local news. The Topeka Capital and the Journal plus the nationally recognized Kansas City Star and the Times provided broader windows on the nation and world. The only radio station in Manhattan was KSAC, an educational operation at Kansas State College, but residents of the town could easily hear network radio affiliates from the larger cities.

    The Close family home at 1726 Poyntz, little changed in 2005. (AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)

    Three theaters presented Hollywood’s latest offerings, usually weeks after they were first released.

    All of these facets of Manhattan appealed to the Closes. They valued respectability, and they appreciated the value of a college education. By all accounts they were typical of the business-oriented residents in town. They were churchgoing, Republican, middle class—not demonstrative in their affections, but that was not unusual for the era. Del Senior devoted his attention to his business, and it was rare to stop by the Close house and discover him at home.

    The Closes remained childless until Mildred was thirty-five. As it was apparently her first and only pregnancy, and her son would remain an only child, there were whispers that he might have been unplanned. Of course, with Del Senior spending so much time at work, away from home, Mildred might have wanted a child to fill the empty space. But such is speculation.

    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about young Del’s childhood is that it was, to all outward appearances, unremarkable. But he felt the paternal neglect early in his childhood, and whether it was caused by business worries, alcohol, a chemical imbalance, or simply his own upbringing, didn’t matter. How much Mildred compensated for his father’s distance is unclear, but Del Junior always felt close to his mother.

    There were signs from a very early age that Del was drawn to performing. It may have been an attempt to gain his father’s attention, earn his mother’s approval, or simply an effort to get attention from anyone, because he quickly learned that people who performed got noticed. He once claimed that his theatrical career began as a lobster in the Lobster-Quadrille from Alice in Wonderland. Another oft-told story recalled his performance at four years old as the troll under the bridge in The Three Billy Goats Gruff, when he refused to die and instead ate all the billy goats. The guilt troubled him even at that young age; he knew he had violated some unspoken principle. Looking back, he realized it taught him that sometimes it’s more heroic to lose.²

    Del Close Junior and Senior, June 1934.

    (COURTESY OF CHARNA HALPERN)

    While his mother may have contributed to his sense of humor, young Del, like so many comics, may have developed or honed his wit as a defense mechanism, a way of staving off ridicule as a child. He was a chubby kid, hair sticking up, Coke-bottle-thick glasses, ears sticking up, according to grade-school classmate Ron Young, who referred to him by his childhood nickname, Pickle.

    Del himself agreed with that assessment.

    I was a fat kid with thick glasses, for a while I wore braces on my legs, and I have a potentially funny name—Del is very close to dill pickle—and also asthma; whatever skin disease was available I had it aplenty, like dermatitis—which is a wonderful disease; it means skin disease. I suffered from poison ivy, and they gave me anti-poison ivy shots and I was, like, immobilized for a long time, watching for flying saucers out of the corner of my window . . . yeah, so, ah, I had to get funny before they did because it hurt less when I got the laughs.³

    Mildred Close with her son.

    (COURTESY OF CHARNA HALPERN)

    But there is evidence to contradict his own description. Existing photos of Del as a baby reveal no evidence of excessive weight, aside from slightly chubby cheeks. Even photos of his adolescence show little that could be construed as heavy, and his complexion likewise appears normal. Although he claimed he was once tied to a tree while other boys threw firecrackers at him, such pranks were apparently rare.

    Whether his health problems made him feel inferior and a worrying responsibility to his parents is a matter of conjecture. Because he was often sick as a child, and his father was emotionally distant, it would be easy for a child to imagine cause and effect. In adulthood, Del would have no use for children, at least in public. Friends felt it stemmed from his own youth, which taught him that children were burdens.

    One day in kindergarten, the children were all required to make a train, but young Del could not find it in himself to finish the assignment. Decades later, when he decided to dedicate a notebook to various writings, he recalled:

    I have a bad record, completion-wise, with beginnings in kindergarten. I never finished my train. The guilt, the fear! There was the unfinished train at the back of my cubical wooden locker and I dreaded its discovery by the teacher because you weren’t allowed on to the next project—what was it? Boring a hole in a piece of plywood?—until you’d finished your train! Why I didn’t want to finish it, I don’t know. Perhaps after I’d built the engine and a passenger car, the caboose held no mysteries for me. No challenge—no revelation. Just more wood, glue, and screw eyes. But I assure you the degree of paranoia my cheating caused me—I went on—without finishing!—was, in its childlike excess, equivalent to that experienced by the Rosenbergs before their arrest. I would be found out, denounced, and sent back! And I so wanted to get on—and I did. I was never discovered—nobody ever gave it a second thought. But me. To me, this was a horrible lesson to learn—You don’t have to finish stuff!

    There were no penalties for failure to finish what you started. The unfinished toy train was a lesson that would cause problems throughout his life.

    The modest, white, two-story Cape Cod-style house, with twin gabled dormers overlooking the street, was situated on a small lot at 1726 Poyntz in a quiet residential neighborhood. It was typical for its time, with an unfinished basement, a living room, sitting room, and kitchen on the first floor, and two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.

    Though he would come to be considered a loner, Del liked to play games like hide-and-seek with the neighborhood children, and was particularly good at hiding. But his favorite game was army. It was more fun to shoot him than anyone else, and Del always wanted to be the one who got shot. Young recalled, It would take him twenty minutes to die.

    Del and the neighborhood kids used the lilac bushes in the yard outside the Close house as their secret clubhouse, where the nine- and ten-year-old boys would play poker and discuss activities more illicit. At one point, Del and two other boys, James Bascom and Billy Harms, formed a club, and Del learned another way to get his father’s attention. The three of them would go to Duckwalls, the local five-and-dime, and pocket small items. Then they would gather under the lilac bushes and show off their ill-gotten gains. But their shoplifting club would not last long. Harms’s parents found out and alerted the other parents. The reaction of Del Senior to his son’s petty larceny is unrecorded, but the activities of the shoplifting club immediately ceased.

    Del as a toddler.

    (COURTESY OF CHARNA HALPERN)

    Young Del attended Eugene Field Elementary School, viewed at that time as an elite grade school, attended by the children of doctors, professors, and other professionals. Unlike many of his fellow students, Del never skipped a grade, but he grew up feeling the peer pressure of over-achieving classmates.

    Del was not interested in team sports, and it was his love of performing that occasionally revealed a competitive streak. He put on a play in the basement of his house, while another unnamed friend put on another play in competition. During the other boy’s play, Del heckled him mercilessly, ruining the other play.

    The Close family was comfortably middle class, and did not want for material possessions. During World War II, Pickle had an allowance of 25¢ per week, an amount unheard of in the neighborhood. One of the more ostentatious displays of his prosperity was the pile of comic books he had amassed. Classmates like Gary Wilson and Young would visit Pickle to trade comic books. His collection included eclectic titles, with war comics, Classics Illustrated, and even some horror titles. The other boys would collect soda pop bottles to buy traditional superhero titles like Batman, Green Lantern, and Blackhawk, but they were always happy to trade with Pickle. He had so many that he would often brazenly trade two or three of his comics for one of theirs.

    Del was a voracious reader of all manner of literature. Another friend, David Dary, shared with Del a keen interest in magic, and for a time they checked out all of the magic books in the Manhattan Public Library. One book in particular, John Northern Hilliard’s Greater Magic, was a favorite; because there was only one copy, the two of them attempted to keep it checked out so that no one else could get it. But Del did not have the patience or discipline to learn the subtleties of coin or playing card manipulation. He was much more interested in shocking illusions like cutting off heads or sawing a woman in half.

    The neighborhood children considered Mildred Close nervous and fidgety. When they arrived at Del’s house to play, she would be waiting in order to inspect their shoes for mud. Only when assured they wouldn’t track anything into the house would she show them down to the basement.

    Another impressive show of opulence awaited them downstairs. There on the workbench was the largest chemistry set any of them had ever seen. Young Del’s interest in magic waned when he received it, and he focused his attention on the Gilbert Chemistry Set, which opened up and telescoped out, then opened again, until it covered the tabletop. In front of it were chemicals, beakers, flasks, and two Bunsen burners. His friends assumed that his parents would buy him anything to keep him out of trouble.

    Instead, the chemistry set provided new methods of mischief. One day, when several boys were playing with Del in his basement, he showed them the handle of a hammer missing its head. So what? asked the others, unimpressed.

    Del immediately grabbed a small packet of potassium permanganate and sulfur made with his chemistry set, and ordered the others to the bare concrete stoop just outside his back door. He put the packet at one end of the stoop, and cautioned the others to step back. Del then ducked and hit the package with another hammer. The resulting explosion convinced the other boys. The head of the hammer was never found.

    On occasions when Del was caught and talked back, Mildred literally washed his mouth out with soap. One day, Del was leading Young and Wilson into the house, and the other two boys insisted on taking off their muddy shoes. Del scoffed and insisted they keep their shoes on. The old biddy won’t know— he began, then looked up to see his mother standing directly in front of him. In one motion, and without looking, he automatically extended his right hand to the kitchen counter; he grabbed a half-used bar of Ivory soap, took a bite out of it, and spit it back into the sink. The other boys and even Mildred couldn’t resist laughing at Del’s mechanical response.

    Summers were for vacations. There was a major trip in summer 1946, which saw the family motor to Yellowstone National Park, Salt Lake City, the Grand Canyon, and even as far as Los Angeles. Young Del utilized his new camera to document the trips.

    By junior high school, Del had taken an interest in photography, fabricating a makeshift darkroom. It soon became clear that Del had found a way to combine his photographic hobby with his growing curiosity about girls. He surreptitiously showed some of his studies to classmates; they were nude photos of a female classmate, whom Del had somehow managed to talk into posing for him.

    Del now found himself in social situations involving the opposite sex. A number of seventh-grade boys, including Del, had signed up for a social dance class, and Del often found himself partnered with Donna Fearing (then known as Donna Joan Morine). Del stuck with the dancing class (which was not affiliated with the school) but when dance recital time came, all of the boys had dropped out but Del. The couple attended dance parties in basement rec rooms and local halls, with Del’s father driving them, and Del sitting next to his father in the front seat. While he was not uncomfortable around girls, he could be a bit shy or self-conscious, noted Fearing. When a local newspaper reporter once asked him what it was like to be the only male among a class of leotard-clad females, Del replied that it was a lot of fun.

    They were purely platonic, their relationship largely confined to group dances, although Del and Fearing had similar backgrounds and interests (she was also bright and an only child). Their physical relationship was limited to a lone kiss on the cheek. There was no fight or breakup; Del simply quit asking her out during the eighth grade.

    Those who consider him a counterculture icon might be shocked to learn that Del was even a Boy Scout. Del’s scrapbook includes photographs of and by a fourteen-year-old Del participating in the 1946 Boy Scouts camporee at Leonardville (about eighteen miles northwest of Manhattan) as a member of Troop 74. The troop met regularly at the Presbyterian church on North Eighth Street, where the Close family were members. But Del rose no higher than the rank of first class scout, and by the time he entered high school, in the tenth grade, he had lost interest in scouting.

    Young Del’s parents plied him with expensive gifts and toys, including a rather extravagant bicycle, to keep him occupied.

    (COURTESY OF CHARNA HALPERN)

    But all was not as idyllic as it might seem. A friend in adulthood once claimed that Del alluded to witnessing alcohol and spousal abuse while growing up: My old man used to knock my old lady around, he allegedly confessed. The account is unreliable, though if true, it would be illuminating. Del never spoke of it to others, even close friends.

    Hindsight would suggest that Del Senior may have struggled with depression, and possibly alcoholism, but both conditions were less understood at that time. Whether a modern perspective would have helped the elder Del’s uneasy relationship with his son is speculation, but this darker side of family life was kept carefully hidden in that more repressive age.

    Del could always escape from any domestic unpleasantness by reading. Even at a young age, his best friends were books, particularly horror, fantasy, and science fiction. But there was no bookstore in Manhattan at that time, and Tal Streeter recalled that Del used to steal books from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at Sixth and Poyntz.

    In addition to his comic books, Del would devour the pulp magazines of the 1930s and ‘40s. He became pen pals with a boy he met in the pages of Startling Stories. Joined by a third boy in 1949, they began publishing their own science fiction poetry magazine, called The Cataclysm. Robert E. Briney was the editor, while Del served as assistant editor and publisher, and it ran for eight issues. He even recruited Donna Fearing, his junior high girlfriend, to write some poetry for it. During his junior year of high school, an article in the school newspaper announced that he would coauthor Fantastic Art, with half of its eighty pages to present science fiction and fantasy artwork, some original and some reprints, but there is no way to confirm whether it was ever actually published.

    In the mid-1940s, the Close household welcomed a distinguished visitor. In later years, Del would often mention that General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his wife Mamie stopped by to visit with their cousin’s cousin. (It was not a close relationship, nor were they blood relatives. Eisenhower’s first cousin, Florence Musser, was the daughter of his aunt, Hannah Eisenhower Musser; Florence married Albert Ray Etherington, who was a cousin of Mildred Etherington Close.)

    Del claimed that they came by for Thanksgiving dinner, but the dates do not support this. Historical records show that Ike was in Manhattan for a family reunion the week of January 6, 1944 (his brother Milton had taken over as president of Kansas State the previous year), and could easily have stopped by the Close household for a visit. Additional records show that the general also returned to Abilene on June 21-22, 1945, as a returning war hero; again, on September 12, 1946, for his mother’s funeral; and then on October 27, 1947, for a luncheon to present gifts to a museum. Although he could have stopped by the Close house in Manhattan during any one of these visits, the 1944 date seems likeliest. It was apparently an uneventful visit. Del recalled that he was asked to show Eisenhower his room. The youngster showed him the picture of General Douglas MacArthur tacked to his wall, explaining that MacArthur was his hero, which may have left his celebrated relative less than enthused about the boy’s taste.

    While Del’s best friends were books, his first love was performing. His flirtation with the theater had developed at an early age, but when he was nine years old, he began to understand that theater could have a deeper meaning, a more transformative effect than the thrill of performing.

    It was in 1943 that young Del discovered Hamlet. It would prove to be a touchstone that would surface during pivotal moments in his life. His introduction came by way of Jack Benny in the 1942 film To Be or Not to Be. Benny and Carole Lombard star in the Ernst Lubitsch classic about a troupe of Polish actors embroiled in espionage. Benny’s performance of the To be or not to be? soliloquy struck a chord in the thoughtful youth. He felt it was the first intelligent question he had ever heard a human being ask himself.

    For answers, he turned to his grandfather, who operated a roundhouse (a tavern serving 3.2 beer) in nearby Abilene. His grandfather realized that the boy was keen to unlock the mysteries of Shakespeare and World War II. In response to his grandson’s questioning, he led Del to his glassed-in bookcase and presented him with a leatherbound copy of Hamlet. The boy devoured it and began memorizing long passages.

    Hamlet would change his life. It confirmed that there was more to life than a mundane existence in a quiet Kansas town. He would often repeat to his classes Freud’s assertion that "Hamlet was the first modern play, because the main conflict was not external, between characters or with nature. It was internal, within the character of Hamlet." Del identified with the title character and it was his attempts at understanding the play that led him intellectually forward. While still in junior high school, he began attending plays at the high school, and displaying the programs on the wall of his bedroom.

    Del had also developed an interest in music. He carried a large bass drum, which he played in the marching band throughout his high school years. His selection of the oversized instrument appealed to a love of performing as much as a love of music. Del began playing in the fourth grade, continued through high school, and even played in Manhattan’s Municipal Band. His former band teacher, Laurence Norvell, recalled him as an excellent student who played well. Del later claimed that his percussion experience served him well one afternoon in high school, when he was helping to construct scenery and hammering on the floor below band practice. I had the extreme courtesy to hammer in time to the music, he recalled, and said that the band director, apparently impressed, offered him a bass drum scholarship to the Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science.⁵ Many years later, Norvell could not verify Del’s account, and while he couldn’t substantiate the idea of a bass drum scholarship, neither could he rule it out.

    During his high school days, Del became close friends with Tal Streeter, an accomplished alto saxophonist who began playing in dance bands during junior high school. It was a friendship sparked by music—both of them played in the city band, as it was commonly called—but they only became close through their mutual love of science fiction. During the summer of their sophomore year, Del introduced him to Dianetics, the book by then-science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, and Del led them in experiments on prebirth awareness.

    Streeter’s family had moved nearby, and so Del and his friend would walk to school together each day and back home in the afternoon. It was a pleasant walk down Poyntz Avenue, under the trees that lined the street, past rows of houses, the sprawling City Park, and several churches, before reaching the high school eight blocks away, where they would find classmates sitting along the low concrete retaining wall at the corner.

    On weekends, the social life in Manhattan for young people was centered on Teen Town, held in the Community Building a block north of Del Close Jewelers. Although he would occasionally attend Teen Town, Del’s social life had not improved since junior high. Even his closest friends could not recall any of Del’s dates or relationships with girls, with one exception. Del had a date with a high school classmate who lived nearby, two blocks off Poyntz. Streeter recalled her as a vapid dullard who was in his social science class. That weekend, Streeter was walking past the girl’s house about ten or eleven at night and noted that her light was on. He started walking toward it, but when he walked into the yard, someone said, Shhh! Shhh! Del came out of the bushes. He had dropped off his date, gone around the block, and came back to peek in her window.

    Most classmates simply could not remember Del being in any of their classes—only in after-school activities. People rarely sought him out, and he was content to be a loner most of the time. If the attention that he most wanted was denied him, that same desire for attention and a proclivity toward dark humor also drew other boys to him.

    Del enjoyed a good practical joke. The musicians dressed in white shirts and white trousers for the weekly band concerts, which triggered Del’s imagination. One week when Del was not playing in the band, he and two other musicians went downtown to a local movie theater after a concert. The other two explained at the ticket window that they were taking a patient from the local mental institution for an evening’s outing, and would be sitting down in the front, so if there were any problems, the management knew where they were. The three of them sat in the front row, and for the rest of the film, Del would sporadically jump up, yell, or go into a spastic fit.

    One stunt during his teen years has taken on legendary stature in Manhattan.

    It was a hot, quiet summer night on July 8, 1951. On the east side of Manhattan, a train was pulling away from the station, leaving its passengers to go their separate ways. Home air-conditioning was uncommon, so many Manhattan residents were sitting on their front porches to catch the breeze.

    One of the pedestrians took his time as he walked up the 200 block of Pierre Street at 10:17 P.M. The neighbors paid little attention. It was a familiar scene, one that they witnessed whenever a passenger train pulled into the station.

    But this night was different. A black Packard turned the corner, and the young man turned to watch it, staring nervously. Then he resumed walking, faster this time, looking over his shoulder as the vehicle approached. A few neighbors began to take notice.

    Finally, the large sedan caught up to the young man and pulled over. A shot rang out, then a second, and the young man screamed, staggered, and fell to the ground. Two of the men quickly climbed out of the car. They dragged him away by his feet, threw the body of Del Close into the back seat, and sped away. The car drove through the Union Pacific rail yards, and headed out of town, going east on U.S. 24 and 40.

    That might have been the end of it. The perpetrators might have gone unidentified, but a lone car followed them as they drove along a rural road trying to get back into town via the Kearney Street cutoff. After briefly being stuck in the mud, they returned on U.S. 24 and 40. The sedan headed to a service station near the entrance to the stadium to clean off the vehicle at 10:45 P.M.

    But an all-points bulletin had alerted authorities as far away as Topeka. Within moments, the gas station was swarming with flashing red lights and armed policemen, all weapons pointing toward the men in the car. Cars from the Kansas Highway Patrol, the Riley County Sheriff’s Department, and Manhattan City Police blocked the exits.

    Wisely, all of the young men raised their hands, slowly, keeping them in plain sight as they exited the vehicle, one by one. It was loaded with Manhattan High School students: Gene Allen, Robert Fitzgerald, Larry Evans (a local doctor’s son), Carl Englehorn, and George Hoover. And there was Del Close.

    The police came with rifles and shotguns at the ready, Englehorn recalled fifty-five years later. One of us said, ‘Those are big guns to be pointing at us.’ The reply was, ‘How do you think that poor fellow you shot felt?’

    Sheriff Lee Goode opened the trunk. It was empty. Angry but puzzled, he turned to the young men. Where’s the body! he demanded. Where’s the body!

    Del raised one hand even higher.

    Here, he said quietly. I’m the body.

    This appeared to anger the sheriff even more.

    What? he barked. What did you do with the body!

    I’m right here, said Del, frightened but polite. I’m the body.

    The bewildered sheriff, who was looking for a dead body, refused to believe that no one had actually been shot, and that the young man claiming to be the body actually was the body. But that was indeed the case.

    The next day the Manhattan Mercury ran the story on page 1, column 1, under the headline Shooting Faked by Six Youths Here Sunday Night; Armed Officers Hunt for the Supposed Victim, Killers After Hoax Scene. The whole thing was exposed as a prank. Gene Allen and the other four in the car had reportedly planned it at the Palace Drug Store, Hoover volunteering his father’s telephone company car. When they needed a victim, they approached Del, who was happy to oblige, and played his part with aplomb.

    The newspaper reported that the six gave written statements to Chief of Police Clinte Bolte:

    They were riding around in the Hoover car looking for something exciting to do. Each admitted that he had been thinking of the scheme for some time. They borrowed a .22 caliber pistol belonging to Hoover’s father. They obtained blank shots and a raincoat for props. Close acted as the victim. After practicing the shooting three times they said they rode around town looking for an audience. They spotted several persons sitting on a porch in the 100 block on Pierre. [Actually, the 200 block.] Close got out of the car walking down the street, acting suspicious and looking around pretending to see if someone was following him. The car was driven around the block, and as it came up alongside Close, two blank shots were fired at him. He screamed and fell to the ground.

    In fact, the teens were lucky. One wrong move, and the officers would have opened fire, a fact the chief impressed upon them. But they had won the admiration of their friends and schoolmates, who praised their timing and their success in frightening the neighbors.

    Ultimately, the teens were given probation, and their names were stricken from the record. The most serious punishment was reserved for Gene Allen, after a pregnant friend of his mother’s became so frightened that she went into premature labor.

    In the midst of his pranks and his unorthodox approach to dating, the teenaged Del availed himself of the opportunities presented by the high school drama department. His most important mentor may have been Harold Loy, who directed him in his first significant role, in the Manhattan High School production of Cuckoos on the Hearth, presented in December 1949. The school newspaper, the Manhattan Mentor, noted that the cast had time for pranks: One day they ganged up on Del Close and handcuffed him. This was all right, except someone by mistake lost the keys.

    Del didn’t mind this sort of prank. The other students admired his talent, and he had their attention. Handcuffs were not enough to deter his interest in the theater, and he began successfully auditioning for other productions, which led to some noteworthy accomplishments while still in high school.

    The first was a summer scholarship for a five-week course in drama and theater at Denver University. Del was chosen from applications received across the country, in part because of the letters of recommendation from Loy and principal Herbert Bishop.

    The course, which began June 20, 1950, was clearly a formative event. Not only was he on his own, hundred of miles from Manhattan, but he was also immersed in his newfound love for theater.

    The High School Group in Drama presented a pair of one-act plays on July 20. Del had a small role as a villager in The Red Velvet Goat but a larger role in Gammer Gurton’s Needle, which also featured Aneta Corsaut, later known for her role as Helen Crump, Andy Taylor’s longtime girlfriend on The Andy Griffith Show. A high school speech student from Hutchinson, Kansas, she immediately got Del’s attention.

    I immediately fell madly in love with [Corsaut], in a totally inept, wasp, Midwestern way, kind of like puppy-dog, tongue hanging out, not knowing precisely what to do about it, just being completely socially inept and everything else, but there was no denying that I was utterly enthralled with this young lady. I used to go down to Wichita—well, that’s where the bus went, then you get a bus from Wichita to Hutchinson, which is about 35 miles further on. That’s where I met L. Ron Hubbard, was visiting Aneta.

    They remained in contact for a time, and he met up with her again years later in New York.

    She had just gone off to New Jersey to make a film called The Blob for some religious film company. They weren’t making any money doing religious movies, so they thought they had better make a SF-horror movie. This was Aneta’s first movie and Steve McQueen’s second. So, my high school sweetie was in the first Blob.

    Denver gave him a taste of acting as a vocation. When he returned, his classmates wanted to hear about his experiences in Denver, and Del was happy to comply. He knew his friends wanted a good story, so he told Tal Streeter and the others about a performance of Shakespearean scenes that included an excerpt from Hamlet. Del explained that they had needed a skull and had decided the best place to get one was a graveyard.

    They entered, broke into a crypt, and opened a casket, he told his friends. The skeleton was inside, but it wasn’t completely skeletal. His companions were queasy, but they pulled the skull off the body and took it with them. But unfortunately, there was still a little flesh and hair stuck to it. So they pulled an old cauldron onto the porch of the house where they were staying, and began boiling the skull to remove the flesh and hair. It was the three witches: Double, double, toil and trouble. Someone saw them and called the police, and they were taken into custody, but somehow they were not charged with grave robbing.

    His friends were enthralled by his storytelling, and did not question his veracity. Why should they? This was the dead body in the shooting, who had thrown spastic fits in the movie theater. Grave robbing? Del would do it without a second thought, any sort of high jinks and pranks that were more creative than destructive. The things that happened to him in Denver were more exaggerated than anything that happened to him to that point, Streeter observed.

    Although there is no way to completely disprove the story, if Del had been part of a group of theater students who had broken into a crypt, stolen a skull, boiled it clean, and escaped criminal charges, he would undoubtedly have talked about it the rest of his life. But the idea of a real-life skull in Hamlet was one that would stay with him in the years to come.

    After Denver, his enthusiasm for the theater was greater than ever. Del was cast in the junior class’s play that fall, The Great Big Doorstep, and also produced, directed, and starred in a language club production of The Red Velvet Goat. More important, Del was cast in a college production of Macbeth, the first time a high school student had ever been cast by the Kansas State Players. The Manhattan Mercury wrote: When he expressed his desire to play in a college production, Earl G. Hoover, drama director at the college (and no relation to classmate George Hoover), gave him a chance to try out along with the college students.⁹ He was cast as Young Siward, doubling as a murderer. The challenges and prestige of appearing in a college production had lured him away from high school theater while still only a junior.

    The Collegian Drama Critic enjoyed the production, but noted, Not quite as convincing were the fencing scenes, despite the coaching of Sgt. Al Nazareno of Fort Riley.¹⁰ One of those scenes featured Del showing off his nascent fencing skills. The teenaged Del had become a fencing enthusiast, thanks to Nazareno, and utilized his abilities during a fencing scene between Young Siward and Macbeth.

    Del had a knack for fencing, and became an active member of the Wildcat Fencing Club at Kansas State, coached by Nazareno. Seventy-five fencers entered the city’s first annual open fencing tournament, and Del emerged as gold medal winner in the intermediate class.

    As the end of his junior year drew near, Del was obviously outgrowing Manhattan High School. But he still had more to accomplish during the spring of 1951.

    Among the MHS entries to the District Speech and Drama Festival at Clay County Community High School on March 16 was a one-act play, Balcony Scene, staged in competition with plays presented by six other schools. Del was top-billed of the cast of eight, playing Man. Also in the cast, along with Tal Streeter, was a beautiful young student named Inger Stensland who played Girl. She would later go on to a brief, successful career in Hollywood after changing her name to Inger Stevens. Most notable, she starred in a number of major Hollywood films, including

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